But it is quite the necessary evil if one is building a Long-EZ, eh?!

So today I had to bite the bullet, quit my belly-aching, and get to work sanding down all the epoxy wiped areas on this bird.

I started out with a couple hours of sanding down all the epoxy wiped areas first with 150 sandpaper dry, followed by going over the same areas with 150 grit wet sandpaper.

Here we have the right longeron exterior sanded to 150 grit wet and ready for primer. That being said, I will need to do a bit of cleanup on the inside areas once the canopy comes off, when I have full access to the right longeron just under the canopy lip.

Although my persistent problem area is much less egregious, the right sidewall still had a number of shiny spots (depressions) that I felt needed to be dealt with now, prior to primer and paint.  So I marked the areas with green tape for another 3-5 coats of epoxy wipes to level them out with the surrounding surfaces.

I will say that the right top side of the nose turned out nice after a round of dry sanding, then wet sanding…

as did the left side as well.  Yes, the nose is looking good with minimal defects and is ready for primer and paint!

I then wheeled the left wing pallet dolly outside to minimize the dust from sanding the just-micro’d outboard underside wing, winglet and intersection fairing.

But first, I used a ruler to check the elevation between the bottom wing surface just forward of the bottom aileron surface: inboard, middle and outboard.  All looked good, or at least acceptable in the case of the outboard elevation.

I then checked the gap between the bottom wing aileron pocket edge and the front bottom edge of the aileron.  The plans say 0.08″ minimum to 0.2″ maximum.  I’m clearly towards the minimum side (which is good in my book) with all the blue areas below denoting less than 0.08″ gap.  Clearly I need to do some judicious sanding along the aileron-wing aileron pocket edge… all on the wing side.

While sanding the aft end of the right longeron, I also checked the quality of the surface of the Turtledeck… well, it wasn’t as smooth as I remembered.  Where I had to do subsequent micro fills, there where elevation differences at the seams of old and new micro.  So after a good bit of sanding (which helped a lot) I decided to slather on a few good coats of epoxy to help even out the surface: 5 coats to be exact (pic 1).

I also use the mixed epoxy to hit all the very slight low spots on the right fuselage sidewall.  Again, 5 coats (pic 2).

Outside I spent nearly 2 hours doing the initial sanding on the left bottom outboard wing, the inside bottom winglet and the bottom wing-winglet intersection fairing.  I’d say I’m at least 80% finished.  But it was getting late so I wheeled the wing back into the shop to finish up the fine-tune sanding tomorrow.

Here’s another shot of the initial sanding of the left bottom outboard wing, inside bottom winglet and the bottom winglet intersection fairing.

My goal is to finish up the left wing tomorrow and get cracking on the right wing.
Rock on!